(Nanowerk News) Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. announced that the Japan Advanced Institute for Science and Technology (JAIST) has put Japan and Asia's first Cray XC30 supercomputer into production. JAIST, one of Japan's premier academic research centers, is using its new Cray XC30 supercomputer for research into massively parallel programming and a variety of scientific pursuits.

The two-cabinet Cray XC30 supercomputer at JAIST has a peak performance of more than 118 teraflops, and is the Institute's main system for its high performance computing (HPC) facility. Researchers and scientists at JAIST are applying the advanced HPC technologies offered in the Cray XC30 supercomputer towards speeding advancements in the development of new algorithms for highly parallel computers, performing large scale simulations in nanotechnology and biomechanics, and a wide range of other scientific disciplines.

"JAIST follows a philosophy of developing the next-generation of world-class scientists and researchers through an academic environment that is rich in science and technology," said Professor Mineo Kaneko, Director of the Research Center for Advanced Computing Infrastructure at JAIST. "The pioneering Cray XC30 supercomputer will accelerate our efforts of advancing leading-edge research and education."

"It is a real honor for us to have installed Asia's first Cray XC30 supercomputer at an organization that is as important to us as JAIST," said Mamoru Nakano, president of Cray Japan. "Our company has enjoyed a long history with the Institute, and we have been very fortunate to have provided JAIST and its users with a number of Cray supercomputers over the years, including previous generation systems such as the Cray T3E and the Cray XT3, and several others. We are excited that our partnership continues to provide JAIST's users with the supercomputing resources they need to advance scientific research."

Previously code-named "Cascade," the Cray XC30 supercomputer is Cray's most advanced HPC system and is engineered to meet the performance challenges of HPC users. The Cray XC30 supercomputer features the new Aries system interconnect; a Dragonfly network topology that frees applications from locality constraints; an innovative cooling system that utilizes a transverse airflow to lower customers' total cost of ownership; the next-generation of the scalable, high performance Cray Linux Environment that also supports a wide range of ISV applications; Cray's HPC optimized programming environment; and the ability to handle a wide variety of processor types, including Intel Xeon processors, Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors, and NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators.